US Senate approves spending package, but short government shutdown likely 

United States senators have approved a last-minute deal to avert the worst impacts of an imminent government shutdown, after Democratic anger over the killing of two people by immigration agents derailed government funding talks.

After hours of delay, the US Senate passed the compromise spending package on Friday by a bipartisan vote of 71 to 29.

But a shutdown is still set to begin on Saturday because the House of Representatives is out of session until Monday, meaning it cannot ratify the Senate’s agreement before the midnight deadline on Friday – making a weekend funding lapse unavoidable.

Senate leaders say the legislation approved on Friday will nonetheless greatly increase the chances that the shutdown ends quickly, potentially within days.

“Technically, there will be a partial government shutdown come midnight on Saturday,” Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan said, reporting from Washington, DC.

“The earliest that the House of Representatives can take a look at the changes, which the US Senate approved late on Friday, is not before Monday. That’s because they’ve been in recess all this week. They should be coming back to Washington this weekend,” Jordan said.

“The assumption right now from the Trump administration, which was in support of this compromise bill passed in the Senate on Friday, is that this can all be worked out very quickly early next week,” she said.

But there is also a concern the shutdown could drag out longer, given political polarisation around President Donald Trump’s administration’s harsh immigration raids and the killing of US citizens at those operations.

“So there is the expectation that this could be resolved early next week. But there is the possibility that it may not be,” Jordan added.

The funding impasse has been driven by Democratic anger over aggressive immigration enforcement following the fatal shootings of two US citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Good – by federal agents in separate incidents this month in the northern city of Minneapolis amid a violent operation against undocumented migrants.

The killings in Minneapolis have become a flashpoint that has hardened opposition to approving new money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without changes to how immigration agencies operate.

Under the deal negotiated between the White House and Senate Democratic leaders, lawmakers approved five outstanding funding bills to finance most of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year in September.

The deal approved by the Senate separates funding for the DHS – which oversees immigration agencies – from the broader government funding package, allowing lawmakers to approve spending for agencies such as the Pentagon and the Department of Labor while they consider new restrictions on how federal immigration agents operate.

Funding for the DHS has now been split off and extended for just two weeks under a stopgap measure intended to give lawmakers time to negotiate changes to the department’s operations.

Senate Democrats had threatened to hold up the funding package entirely in an effort to force President Trump to rein in the DHS and his immigration crackdown.

Democrats want an end to roving patrols by immigration enforcement agents, require immigration agents to ⁠wear body cameras and prohibit them from wearing face masks.

They also want to require immigration agents to get a search warrant from a judge, rather than from their own officials.

Republicans say they are open to some of those ideas.

Much of the US media interpreted the White House’s flexibility as a recognition that it needed to moderate its crackdown on immigration following the Minneapolis killings.